EDITORIAL: Time for Riverside to bring marijuana out of shadows

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, which permitted the use and dispensation of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Over time, cities and counties throughout California have approved or prohibited medical marijuana dispensaries for a variety of reasons. Eight years ago, the city of Riverside elected to prohibit dispensaries and fought all the way to the state Supreme Court to affirm its legal right to do so.

Today, Riverside voters have the choice to either continue this ban or permit dispensaries to legally operate in the city.

Measure A proposes the permitting of up to one dispensary per 30,000 residents, which would translate to 10 dispensaries citywide today. The dispensaries must abide by state law, can only operate in particular zones and cannot operate within 1,000 feet of nurseries or schools.

On balance, there is little reason to oppose the measure and plenty of reasons to support it.

The reasons presented by opponents of the measure for banning medical marijuana seem to mask a moralistic disdain for the drug, and their empirical claims collapse under the weight of the evidence.

According to one argument, medical marijuana dispensaries may attract crime. There is a bit of logic to this claim: Dispensaries are cash-based businesses and, given the murky legal footing of the industry, it makes sense that such establishments might attract unwanted criminal attention.

But, beyond anecdotal claims, the assertion that medical marijuana dispensaries are generally or particularly associated with crime has consistently been found to be false.

In 2012, the National Institute on Drug Abuse funded research at UCLA to investigate the relationship between dispensaries and crime. The conclusion: “There were no observed cross-sectional associations between the density of medical marijuana dispensaries and either violent or property crime rates in this study.”

This makes sense for a number of reasons. Bringing the market above ground rather than forcing it to the black market makes activity more visible to law enforcement. Illicit drug dealers are unlikely to call the police in the event of an armed robbery.

Further, legal establishments fitted with security cameras and staffed with armed guards are likely to deter crime in the vicinity of the establishments themselves. Both of these are included in the text of Measure A.

Then, there is the argument that permitting medical marijuana dispensaries will increase the accessibility of pot to children. After 40 years of prohibition, large percentages of middle-school and high school students throughout the country report relatively easy access to marijuana, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

The fact is that young people will always find ways to get their hands on things they shouldn’t. Fortunately, legal marijuana dispensaries require proper identification, whereas illicit drug dealers could not care less about such laws.

As to the question of whether or not medical marijuana laws are associated with greater marijuana use by young people, the answer is no. In 2013, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health reported “no discernible pattern suggesting an effect on either self-reported prevalence or frequency of marijuana use.”

With the lack of empirical evidence to support dispensary bans, what’s left are matters of practicality.

The city has spent nearly a million dollars in legal fees since 2007 trying to suppress medical marijuana, a plant with clearly established medicinal benefits for those suffering from a whole host of ailments.

While it is true that some of the people claiming medical problems for their marijuana use go against the spirit of Prop. 215, it is also true that there are many more that benefit from safe access to marijuana as prescribed by their doctor.

The City Council doesn’t want to take the lead on this issue, preferring to force the market underground rather than bring it into the open. We must respectfully disagree with the city government and support passage of Measure A.

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